Walkerton, Indiana
Timeline
141 dated events, in order. Each gives the passage that dates it and a link to its full account.
19th century 48 dated mentions
1830s
- 1830–1880First courts, first sheriff, first jail: the county's law, and the township's own officers
St. Joseph County was organized in 1830, its government passing to a board of commissioners on January 19, 1831.
- 1835–1866The first families: the settlement of 1835
The first family: "The first settlements in the territory now forming Lincoln township were made as early as 1835.
- 1835–1880The first farms — settlement from the fall of 1835, and Chapman's farm roll of 1880
The first settlement of the township was made in the fall of 1835 by Christian Fulmer and family. Chapman's narrative continues: "The next spring Thomas H. Wiley came in" — the spring of 1836.
- 1835–2026The frame: how a town platted in 1856 keeps a service record
The ground: the first settlements on this ground were made in 1835, when it lay in Liberty Township; Lincoln Township itself was formed by order of the county board on 7 June 1866, with boundaries that have remained unchanged since (Howard).
- 1837–1843The removal: the column that did not pass here, and the removal that did
Chapman's History of Indiana section, read first-hand, gives the county's frame: in July 1837 Colonel Abel C. Pepper convened the Potawatomi nation at Lake Ke-waw-nay; in the fall of 1837 a party of eighty to ninety was conducted west of the Mississippi by George Proffit…
- 1838–1840The removal: the column that did not pass here, and the removal that did
The removal everyone pictures belongs to the next county south: the forced column of 1838 — the Trail of Death — assembled at Twin Lakes in Marshall County, on the Yellow River reserve whose 1836 sale the taking article above names, and marched its 859 people through Logansport to Kansas, 42 dying on the road…
1850s
- 1851The Hon. Thomas J. Wolfe: a Goodspeed sketch, at sketch strength
The sketch: Goodspeed's Pictorial and Biographical Memoirs of Elkhart and St. Joseph Counties (1893) carries "Hon. Thomas J. Wolfe, of Walkerton" — a dealer in men's and boys' clothing, gent's jewelry, watches and the like, born 8 August 1851 in a log house near Ligonier, Noble County, son of Leonard and Lutitia (Martin) Wolfe…
- 1851West York: the seat before the town
Chapman: the West York post office was established in 1851 by C. W. N. Stephens, half a mile south of the townsite; in 1854 Stephens built the first house in Walkerton and its first store, on ground then "covered with a dense thicket," with no roads laid out.
- 1851–1855Before the rails: the hack road, and the road that does not run here
Before 1855, Walkerton's ground moved at a horse's pace on one road: the mail came by hack on the road from La Porte to Plymouth, and the West York post office — established 1851, half a mile south of the future townsite — was that road's institution here (the Story of Walkerton section leg carries the office and C. W. N. Stephens whole).
- 1851–1884The first store — C. W. N. Stephens, West York and Walkerton, 1851–1884
The post office designated West York, situated a half-mile south of the later townsite, was established in 1851 and kept by C. W. N. Stephens, its first appointee, who, Chapman records, "also had a grocery store, and still holds the position of Postmaster" in 1880…
- 1851–1887The proprietors: Jones, Hannah, Rupel, Place — and the postmaster before the town
It was kept by Mr. C. W. N. Stephens, who had established it in 1851, and was the first appointee" (the town's page).
- 1851–2026The owners roster — proprietors paired to their firms, era by era
Stephens — West York grocery and post office, 1851; the first Walkerton store, 1854. C. Behrn (Behrens) — general store, by 1869.
- 1853–2026The north–south road: the Cincinnati, Peru & Chicago succession, and who runs it now
The town's founding railroad ran north and south: the Cincinnati, Peru & Chicago Railway was chartered on 2 June 1853 and built through this ground in 1855, on the La Porte-to-Plymouth course that made West Troy and then Walkerton possible (the Story of Walkerton section leg carries the plats).
- 1854–1877The founders' frame: two plats, two naming stories, two incorporation years
The first of them was West Troy, "laid out by Elias D. Jones in the southeast part of the northeast quarter of section twenty-three, township thirty-five north, range one west," and platted by him on 14 December 1854 (Howard).
- 1856–2026The frame: five churches in 1907, and a boundary that sorts them still
The Catholic parish was founded in 1856, twenty-one years before incorporation, when the settlement was a railroad camp and a mission station on the Chicago road; the Methodist Episcopal society raised the township's first church house inside the future town in 1859…
- 1856–2026St. Patrick Parish, founded 1856 as St. Henry: the mother parish of the town
It was founded in 1856 as St. Henry Parish — the diocesan newspaper's history is the fullest account reached — when the first Mass was celebrated in the log-cabin home of parishioners by a Holy Cross priest from Notre Dame, and its founding families were Irish Catholics who had come to work on the railroad extension…
- 1858–1907The township era: a schoolhouse of 1858, moved into town in 1876
Schooling on this ground begins, as it does across Indiana, as a township act: Howard's history of 1907 records that Lincoln Township's first school house was erected in 1858, about a mile from the present town of Walkerton — two years after the Walkerton plat itself…
- 1858–1918The early case record: a tested blank
Read whole for this build, the chapter seats its cases everywhere but here: Charles Eager, indicted October 7, 1858, for the murder of Charles Kelley at Mishawaka — the county's first murder indictment, ending in acquittal on self-defense; Alexander Wilson's 1860 killing of Samuel Pierson in Greene Township…
- 1859–2026The Methodist course, 1859–2026: the West York Mission Church becomes Walkerton Community Church
The first church erected in Lincoln Township was the Methodist Episcopal church at Walkerton, built in 1859 — before the town existed, in the settlement's third year of houses.
1860s
- 1861–1865The machinery: a war recorded under another township's name
Howard's enlistment machinery runs from South Bend — the meeting of 19 April 1861, its township subscription committees (Penn, notably, does not appear in his list either, as the Osceola pass found), the Volunteer Aid Association — and Chapman's military chapter is the same.
- 1861–1865The Lincoln men, named: the standard, and what does not yet meet it
A man born in 1836 or 1838 was of prime service age in 1861–65, and burial under a government stone in the town's cemetery is exactly the kind of record the county's graves registration worked from — but age and a stone are not a service record, and neither man is entered anywhere in this section as a Civil War soldier.
- 1862–1880The practitioner era, to 1880: a war surgeon, a doctor-editor, and a preacher-dentist
Dr. Isaiah Poffenberger — the sketch heads him "physician and surgeon, Walkerton, Ind." — was born in Ohio on 31 October 1836, graduated with honors from the Cincinnati Medical College in 1862, and went straight into the Army's operating tents as assistant to Professor Blackman, the U.S. general surgeon, serving at…
- 1867–2026The Horse Town's Trades: Harness, Wagons and Liveries
W. Hamilton's own course — grocery in 1867, then "buggy and carriage painting" about five years — is the trade learning its vehicles one coat at a time.
1870s
- 1870–2026The Baptist arc, 1870–2026: a church built, a building borrowed, a name that returns
"In 1870 the Baptist church was erected," Chapman writes, "and in 1876 the Roman Catholics put up a church building."
- 1873–1916Mills, lumber and the wood trades — Rogers' flour mill, Schwartz & Tischer, the hoop factories
The planing mill's origin is settled from the neighboring township's chapter: North Liberty's Home Manufacturing Company, started in the fall of 1873 and discontinued, sold its machinery to Schwartz & Tischer, who "moved [it] to Walkerton, where they erected a planing-mill" (Chapman, Liberty Township chapter)…
- 1873–2026The east–west road: the Baltimore & Ohio, now CSX's Garrett Subdivision
The second railroad crossed the first eighteen years after the town was platted: the Baltimore, Pittsburgh & Chicago Railway built east–west through Walkerton in 1873, through service followed in 1874, and from 1876 the line ran as the Baltimore and Ohio and Chicago Railroad…
- 1875The Independent line: the town's paper of record, as a source about itself
The succession, whole: the Walkerton Visitor, first issued April 7, 1875; the Independent, whose surviving issues run under the title St. Joseph County Independent (Library of Congress record SN86063061); the Independent-News from 1962 (SN87055783), still publishing in 1996…
- 1875–1886The Walkerton Visitor: Henry S. Mintle's paper, 1875–1886
Walkerton's press begins with a named man on a dated day: the Walkerton Visitor was first issued by Henry S. Mintle on 7 April 1875 — Howard's county history of 1907, read first-hand for this build, is the record — eighteen years after the town's plat and two years before its incorporation.
- 1876–2026The Presbyterian church, organized 5 February 1876; present edifice dedicated 12 June 1904
The Presbyterian society of Walkerton was organized on 5 February 1876 with sixteen members — the date and the count survive because they were preserved in the town's own record tradition, cited by Howard in 1907 from Dr. James F. Endly's local history work.
1880s
- 1880The business census of 1880 — Chapman's count, and the men behind it
Chapman's 1880 canvass is the town's first complete business census, and it is transcribed here whole.
- 1880The town of 1880, in its own census of trades
The roll: the town's history page preserves Chapman's 1880 inventory of Walkerton whole, and it is the nearest thing the founding generation has to a directory: "In 1880, Walkerton consisted of four dry-goods establishments, one clothing store, two hardware and implement stores, three drug stores, one large furniture…
- 1880The first table: Chapman's count and Stephens' store
The town's food economy enters the record as a county history's arithmetic: Chapman, writing in 1880, counts Walkerton with two saloons, two hotels, three drug stores and four dry-goods houses — the eating and drinking houses of a railroad town of a few hundred people…
- 1880Saloons and taverns: two in 1880, and the course the record thins
The drinking course begins at Chapman's count and must honestly thin: two saloons stood in Walkerton in 1880 — Chapman counted them beside the hotels and stores — in a village of the railroad's first generation.
- 1880–2022The corn-and-livestock order, and the dairy record — stock-raising whole, a creamery never named
Chapman's summary line of 1880 — "farming in connection with stock-raising" — is the township's second order arriving inside the first.
- 1880–2026The Bank Course, 1880–2026
Chapman's 1880 business census, transcribed above, names about fifty business men and no bank — the word does not occur in his Lincoln Township chapter.
- 1880–2026Bank robberies: the test run, and its result
The nineteenth-century page stands blank on better evidence than silence: Chapman's 1880 census of Walkerton's business — four dry-goods stores, a clothing store, hardware and implement stores, three drug stores, a furniture store, two hotels, two printing offices, meat shops, two saloons, fifty businessmen in all — names no bank .
- 1882–1883The directory of 1882–83 — Polk's entry transcribed whole
The bank line is the gazetteer's own: in 1882 the nearest bank to Walkerton was at Plymouth, in Marshall County.
- 1884–1885The directory of 1884–85 — Polk's second canvass
Where the 1882 header carried two newspapers, the 1884 header carries one — the Visitor alone; the Republican 's last directory sighting is 1882, and its end is undated in the record read.
- 1884–1885The gazetteer band of 1884–85: three physicians, one dentist, three druggists
Polk's Indiana State Gazetteer for 1884–85 gives the first complete professional census of the town's health trades.
- 1886The Independent under the Endlys: 1886 into the twentieth century
The paper's own surviving issues complicate the title Howard gives, and the complication prints whole: the issues of 1890–1892 reached in Hoosier State Chronicles run under the title St. Joseph County Independent…
- 1888–2026The later seats: Church of God meetings (1888), the Wesleyan church, the Pentecostal church, and Grace Reformed
The earliest is a single newspaper line of real texture: the St. Joseph County Independent's church column of 14 July 1888 carries "THE CHURCH OF GOD — Holds its meetings in the Pres. church every Sabbath (Saturday)" at Walkerton…
- 1889–1917The gazetteer band of 1916–17, and Dr. William F. Miranda (at Walkerton from 20 April, 1889 or 1898)
His practice ran through New Carlisle, Westville, and Medway, Ohio — eight years at Medway — then Attica, Kansas, 1885–87, then Medway again, and then Walkerton, arriving on 20 April of a year his own sketch prints two ways: Howard gives 1898, against the sketch's own arithmetic of two years from 1887, which gives 1889.
1890s
- 1892–2003Creamery and dairy store: Keystone, 1892; Burger Dairy, by 1974
The township's milk found its town institutions early and late: the St. Joseph County Independent of 23 April 1892 notes, in its local columns, that the Keystone Creamery "was started up last week" at Walkerton — a creamery working in town by the spring of 1892, taking the surrounding farms' cream at the railroad.
- 1893–1981Harold Clayton Urey: born here, 1893 — the Nobel laureate
The birth, verified: Harold Clayton Urey was born in Walkerton, Indiana, on 29 April 1893 — stated in the Encyclopaedia Britannica's biography and in the Nobel Foundation's biographical record alike, read first-hand.
- 1895–2026Correspondents and digitization: the town in other papers, and the paper online
Walkerton was news in the county seat's papers long before it lost its own: the South Bend Weekly Tribune carried Walkerton correspondence in the 1890s — the Wars leg of this build cites its 1895 columns for the town's Grand Army news and the cornet band at Lapaz…
- 1896–1897Before the saucers: the 1896–97 airship wave, tested over this ground
The mystery-airship wave ran from mid-November 1896 — a winged ship drawn in the San Francisco Call over Sacramento on November 17 — to the end of April 1897.
- 1897–2005Executions: the county's names, none of them Walkerton's
Indiana's execution record, as the Department of Correction's list gives it and as this county's builds have read it, carries three names whose offenses were St. Joseph County's: Harry Jones, hanged on May 7, 1897; John Grzyb, electrocuted on April 10, 1928; and Alan Matheney, executed on September 28, 2005, for a Mishawaka offense.
- 1898–18991898: the county's regiment, and no Walkerton name in the record reached
The county's regiment was the 157th Indiana Volunteer Infantry — "Studebaker's Tigers," mustered in 10 May 1898 under Col. George M. Studebaker of South Bend, its companies raised at Knox, Elkhart, South Bend and other northern-Indiana towns; no company was raised at Walkerton.
20th century 57 dated mentions
1900s
- 1900The town's own fair: the Walkerton exposition of 1900
First prize winner at Walkerton exposition in the fall of 1900. A prize list existed, a local grower won in it, and the win was worth money in print the following spring — the grammar of a judged agricultural show, in a town whose paper's own arts pass banked the same reference from the Independent's file.
- 1901The opera house: operating in 1901, its building a named gap
Walkerton had an opera house, and the town's paper proves it in passing: the Walkerton Independent of 20 April 1901 reports that "the Walkerton Minstrel entertainment given in the opera house last Friday evening under the direction of Geo.
- 1901The market report: what Walkerton ate, priced every Friday noon
The town's table survives as a price list: the Walkerton Independent of 20 April 1901 prints the "Walkerton Market — corrected every Friday noon by Stephens & Grider, the Walkerton Milling Co., and J. A. Neal & Co." — the town's merchants certifying the prices themselves, weekly, as a standing feature.
- 1901–1992The paper as the town's archive of record
The Independent is not only this section's subject; it is this build's chief witness: its pages are the settling record for the opera house of 1901 and the market report of the same spring (Arts & Culture and Food carry both), for the town-team basketball game of 4 March 1948 whose story a schoolboy named Walter…
- 1903–1916Specialty ground — the onion trade whole, the cucumber economy, and the mint test
Beside the onions stands the cucumber economy, the Farms side of the Businesses file's pickle article: Atwood Brothers' pickle and relish works, established 1903, and the H. J. Heinz Company's salting station (1916) both drew on the same drained ground's cucumber crop, the salting station being the crop's first processing…
- 1907Samuel J. Nicoles: the leading citizen who briefed the historian
The man: Howard's Walkerton section is built on one informant, and Howard names him with unusual warmth: "Mr. Samuel J. Nicoles, long a leading citizen of the town, as he is indeed a Christian gentleman, whose citizenship would be an honor to any community, gives the following comprehensive statement of present conditions"…
1910s
- 1910–1919Walkerton cut glass: the art the town was famous for, 1910–1919
Walkerton's one art industry began with a scouting trip: on Wednesday 2 February 1910 a committee of three men from a Chicago cut-glass factory came to Walkerton to talk the town into hosting a works, and the town talked fast…
- 1911–1953The farmers' institutions — the county Farm Bureau from 1911, the extension service, and the empty chairs
The Farm News of St. Joseph County , the bureau's paper, in its June 1953 retrospective, traced the organization to a meeting of 22 farmers on October 14, 1911, with the St. Joseph County Farm Bureau organized in March 1913…
- 1913–1928Before the branch: plates by mail, and the notary's desk
For the first motorists of Lincoln Township, there was no branch to go to: Indiana began issuing state license plates in 1913, and the transaction ran by mail.
- 1914–1968Walkerton High School: the Indians
Before the Falcons, the town's teams were the Indians: Walkerton High School — its first building of 1914 holding all twelve grades, its 1942 building afterward the Harold C. Urey Middle School (the Schools section carries the buildings whole)…
- 1916–1917The directory of 1916–17 — Polk's entry transcribed whole
The one newspaper is Endley's: William A. Endley had purchased the Visitor from H. S. Mintle in 1887, renamed it the Walkerton Independent , enlarged it to a seven-column quarto, and in 1905 housed it in a new cement building, 60 by 28 feet, with a power outfit and two job rotary presses, at a circulation of 1,500 (Howard)…
- 1916–2026Dentists and drugs after the bands: one dental address in conflict, one pharmacy seat
After Scutt (1884–85) and Dowell and Ross (1916–17), the directories swept for this section surface exactly one Walkerton dental seat: Glenn J. Wisnieski, DDS, at 409 Roosevelt Rd, Walkerton…
- 1917–1918The First World War: one Gold Star name — Sergeant Floyd Ellis Roderick
Enlisted in U.S. Regular Army in April, 1917, Denver, Colo. Sent to Ft. Thomas, Ky.; assigned to Company D, 2nd Engineers.
- 1918–1933The dry years in Lincoln Township
Indiana went dry before the nation did, its statewide prohibition law taking effect in April 1918, ahead of the federal amendment's January 1920 start and running to the national repeal of December 1933…
1920s
- 1929The licensing beats: the driver's license at the Roosevelt Road counter
The vehicle was licensed a generation before the driver was: Indiana's first law governing the licensing of drivers is the Act of March 13, 1929, chapter 162…
- 1929–2023Harold Rubert "Hal" Muncie: the superintendent who built the modern corporation
Born 4 December 1929 at Madison, Indiana; DePauw University, B.A. 1952.
1930s
- 1932–2026The frame: a six-park system the town runs itself, on a record that starts in 1932
The historic record begins with a budget line in 1932, not with a grove or a gift: no fairground, driving park, picnic grove, or Chautauqua ground for Walkerton or Lincoln Township was found in any openly reachable source, and the pioneer books name no park.
- 1932–2026Park government: an enabling power, a levy by 1932, a board by 1984, a department today
The fiscal apparatus is older than any board document reached: the town's published budget of 1 September 1932 levies a Park fund ($300 to be raised, levy .035) and a Recreation fund ($672.89) alongside an "Imp.
- 1933–2021Walter Fredrick LaFeber: born here, schooled here — the historian
The man, at first-hand institutional strength: Walter Fredrick LaFeber was born in Walkerton, Indiana, on 30 August 1933 , son of Ralph and Helen LaFeber — his father a grocer of the town — and the Cornell Chronicle's obituary states the schooling line in the same breath: "He graduated from Walkerton High School in 1951."
- 1936The famous landing, tested: Earhart in this county, November 1936
Amelia Earhart did land in St. Joseph County in 1936 — at Bendix Field, in South Bend, on business; no Walkerton-ground landing stands in the record, and the test is printed at its true size.
- 1939–2026The records of Woodlawn: the 1939 registration, the federal name-forms, and the aggregator layer
The registration layer is the 1939 WPA graves registration, keyed by the South Bend Area Genealogical Society as North Woodlawn (Walkerton), pages 1109–1125, and South Woodlawn (Walkerton), pages 1126–1139 — the only Walkerton-seated keys in the county list.
- 1939–2026The trustee frame: what Indiana law would reach, and the record that it never has here
Under IC 23-14-68, the trustee of each township shall locate and maintain the cemeteries within the township that are without funds for maintenance, were in existence on 28 February 1939, and are operated by a nonprofit organization or not managed by any viable organization…
1940s
- 1940–1970The first-plaza question, 1940–1970
No plaza-form shopping centre — a dated, named group of shops built as one project with its own parking field — stands in Walkerton's record for 1940–1970.
- 1940–2026The modern course — doors, composites, and the corridor, 1940–2026
Its earliest modern marker is a reuse: in January 1940 the post office moved into the former State Bank of Walkerton building, bought by Vern Hardenbrook of the bottling family (the banks article).
- 1941–1945The Second World War: the county's 430, and the town roll the records do not itemize
The item closes as a named gap: the town's Second World War death roll, if the record holds one, will be settled by the full index sweep, by the Saint Joseph County Public Library's Military Service Notes Column Index (1941–1979), which covers the war years from the county newspapers and is the standing settler of…
- 1947The memorial the town did raise: the Mothers of World War II stone, 1947
Below: "Erected 1947 by Mothers of World War II, Walkerton Unit 140." Two things about it are the record's own.
- 1947Case: the Walkerton housewives, July 1947 — the town's one saucer-era report, and it is press, not file
The carrier is the history built on Alfred Loedding, the Wright Field engineer who worked the 1947 reports, Alfred Loedding and the Great Flying Saucer Wave of 1947 , which narrates the wave day by day.
- 1947–1969The national frame: 1947, and the Air Force file system every local case is checked against
On June 24, 1947, the private pilot Kenneth Arnold saw nine objects over Mount Rainier, Washington, moving at an estimated 1,700 miles per hour, and told reporters they flew "like saucers skipping on water"; the newspapers shortened it to "flying saucers," and hundreds of reports followed within weeks.
- 1947–1969The Blue Book ledger for St. Joseph County, compiled whole — and Walkerton's share, stated exactly
No case file, no index entry, no control sheet seats in the town or the township in any source read for this build — not in the 1952 Master Index read whole, not on the official Unknown list read whole, not in the Archives' sanitized file index for 1947–48 read whole.
- 1948The town team: the Walkerton Lions and the House of David, 1948
this section's centerpiece is a Thursday-night game in the high school gym, told by the town's paper: the Walkerton Independent of 4 March 1948, page 4, reports the Walkerton Lions — the town's independent basketball team — beaten 77–46 by Studebaker Local No. 5, the South Bend factory union's team, in the Walkerton high school gym.
- 1948Case: the disc over the Studebaker works, October 13, 1948
On Wednesday, October 13, 1948 — twelve days after the Gorman dogfight over Fargo made the national wires — two office workers of the Studebaker Corporation in South Bend stood at a window on a clear, cloudless day and watched, at 11:45 a.m.
- 1948–2026The hospitals that serve Walkerton — all of them in other towns; and the hospital test, stated whole
Southeast stands the Community Hospital of Bremen , 1020 High Rd, Bremen, IN 46506, a 24-bed critical access hospital: founded in 1948 — a March 2006 dedication account names Dr. Otis Bowen, the future governor, among its founding physicians…
1950s
- 1950Case: TWA Flight 117 and the red disc, April 27, 1950 — seated at Goshen, over the county line
On the evening of April 27, 1950, TWA's Flight 117, a DC-3 westbound for Chicago with Captain Robert Adickes in the left seat and Captain Robert F. Manning as first officer, was over Goshen, Indiana — Elkhart County, the next county east…
- 1950–1953Korea: two Marines — one home in 1953, one still on Hill 1282
During the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir, his unit fought for Hill 1282 near Yudam-ni, on the western side of the reservoir, in the last days of November 1950; he was reported missing in action on 28 November 1950, on Hill 1282 .
- 1951–2026The sectional: the tournament the town measures by
LaFeber's 35 points came in a sectional game in 1951. The Lions' gym hosted the town's basketball winters in the same years.
- 1952Case: the neighboring-city index case, Mishawaka, 1952 — one case, two dates, printed unmerged
In the Project Blue Book Master Index for 1952 — the Air Force's year-by-year list of every sighting it logged, with the evaluation attached — the section headed "2–10 May 1952 Sightings" contains, under day 8, the entry: Mishawaka, Indiana — INSUFFICIENT DATA.
- 1952Case: Captain Kloth's two objects, July 23, 1952 — the county's one official Unknown
On the night of Wednesday, July 23, 1952 — in the middle of the great 1952 wave, four days after the first Washington National Airport radar weekend and six days before General Samford's Pentagon press conference — Captain H. W. Kloth, a United States Air Force pilot, watched two bright blue-white objects over South Bend.
- 1952Case: the newspaper sky-watch, high summer 1952 — a watch the Tribune organized, and no case at the end of it
The last 1952 case in this section is a case a newspaper made on purpose. In the last days of July 1952, with the Washington radar flap on every front page in America, the South Bend Tribune put its own city on watch.
- 1957Case: the next index year opened — South Bend, January 1957
In the Air Force Master Index for 1957, the section headed "January 1957 Sightings" opens with the entry: South Bend, Indiana — Insufficient Data.
- 1959The reorganization: PLJ, North Liberty, and the John Glenn School Corporation — the date in conflict
Indiana's School Corporation Reorganization Act of 1959 set the frame, but Walkerton's consolidation ran on its own clock, and the record gives that clock two different times.
1960s
- 1960–2014Investigators and organizations: the local record the record supports
The state's first organization of record was NICAP's Indiana Subcommittee, Indiana Unit No. 1, authorized in November 1960 and headquartered at Vincennes, in the southwest; its rapid-deployment team worked the great Indiana wave of 1967 across the region, and its report on that wave survives.
- 1964–2026506 Michigan Street: the clinic seat, from the Walkerton Medical Clinic to Saint Joseph Family Medicine
The clinic's paper trail runs long: a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Board decision cites "private treatment records from Walkerton Medical Clinic, dated from August 1964 to February 1992" — official record — and an obituary records a clinic nurse employed there until 1964.
- 1965–2026The festival course: homecoming, summer festival, and the Fourth
The documentary spine is the parks pass's: a Homecoming event "in Place park" in September 1965; the town board's permission in May 1972 for the 4-H horse show at Place Park "in conjunction with the Summer Festival"; the Summer Youth Program at Place Park in June–July 1984 with its carnival booths.
- 1966–1975Vietnam: the six — Walkerton's whole share of the county's fifty-four
On 22 March 1966, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency's account runs, he left a secured encampment near the village of Viem Dong, in Quang Nam Province, after returning from a combat patrol, and did not come back; he was declared missing on 23 March 1966.
- 196820 October 1968: John Glenn dedicates the school that bears his name
The event, two sources agreeing: the consolidated John Glenn High School opened in 1968, and it "was dedicated on October 20, 1968 , with NASA astronaut John Glenn, for whom it is named, present" — the school's own record, citing page 60 of Sheneman's Southern St. Joseph County…
- 1968–2026The Falcons' frame: conference, rivals, and the shape of the record
The consolidated school's teams are the Falcons of the Northern Indiana Conference: John Glenn High School, dedicated on 20 October 1968 with John Glenn himself present (the Schools section carries the school whole), fields the town's teams in the IHSAA's tournament classes.
- 1968–2026The school's arts: bands, choirs, a literary magazine, and a spell-bowl dynasty
Since 1968 the town's largest cultural institution has been its consolidated high school: John Glenn High School's program, as its own account gives it, runs a Drama Club, a Swing Choir, a Jazz Band, a Marching Band, a Concert Band, a Color Guard and an Art Club…
- 1969–1992The manager: Myrna Daube, 1969–1992
Myrna R. Daube of Walkerton (born November 15, 1924; died March 6, 2016) was, by her obituary published in the Pilot News of Plymouth, "the manager of the Walkerton License Branch from 1969 to 1992," and the branch under her had "the reputation as being the friendly license branch in St. Joseph County."
1970s
- 1970–2020Housing: the units series the comparative table carries
CPH-2-16, Table 5 gives the town 681 housing units in 1970, 802 in 1980, and 808 in 1990 — the stock grew by a fifth across the two decades in which the population grew by less than three percent, which is the arithmetic of shrinking households, the same shift the 2020 profile shows completed: 747 households in 817…
- 1974–1976The abduction case: Pearish v. State , 1974–1976
At about 8:00 p.m. on January 11, 1974, Cheryl Pauline Simon drove to a Burger Dairy store in Walkerton with her young daughter and her niece, and went inside, leaving the children in the car.
- 1974–2026The modern database era, worked as a database: NUFORC's record for Walkerton, Indiana
NUFORC was founded in 1974 by Robert J. Gribble as a telephone hotline and is now an online databank of self-submitted reports — more than 150,000 of them — which the Center posts essentially as received.
- 1975–2026The later wars: an exact zero, with its searches
The test: searches for a post-1975, Iraq, or Afghanistan casualty with hometown or home of record Walkerton, Indiana were run across the casualty-list classes — the DCAS-based compilations, the state Iraq and Afghanistan casualty lists, and the county frames — and returned zero Walkerton, Indiana names.
1980s
- 1982The council: five seats, four wards and the town at large
Wards 1 through 4 are residency wards, their boundaries laid out in the code in metes and bounds; Ward 5 is not a district on the map at all but the whole town itself, the at-large member's constituency, and the 2002 restatement of the section (Ordinance 2002-08, passed September 3, 2002, restating an ordinance first…
- 1986–1988The murder case: Pittman v. State , 1986–1988
At about 10:00 p.m. on February 14, 1986, LaBere entered the Walkerton Police Station and reported that his home had been broken into and he had been stabbed.
- 1986–1988The takeover: the commission takes the branches, 1986–1988
The patronage system's end began in 1986, and it was announced as a service scandal as much as a political one: the Indianapolis Business Journal's retrospective states the sequence plainly…
1990s
- 1993–2026The modern record, the standing negatives, and what the file does not carry
The County Metro Homicide Unit, the joint unit that worked St. Joseph County's killings from 1993 until its dissolution on January 1, 2022, spans most of this era, and in the whole of that span no Walkerton or Lincoln Township case stands in the record reached for this build for the unit to have worked…
- 1994–2003Patrolman Bryan Scott Verkler: the hometown line
The South Bend Tribune 's tenth-anniversary account calls him "the Walkerton native"; the Tribune's 2003 reporting gives him as a graduate of John Glenn High School in Walkerton, class of 1994…
21st century 36 dated mentions
2000s
- 2000The peak, the plateau, and the boundary warning
The town's largest count, 2,274 in 2000, is also its least comparable — and the record says why. The 1990 comparative table gives the town's land area as 1.5 square miles in the 1990 boundary; the 2020 Gazetteer gives 1.899.
- 2004Football's famous season: the 2004 Falcons
The program's measuring season is a generation old and still the standard: the 2004 John Glenn football team finished 10–4 and won Class 2A sectional and regional championships — the deepest tournament run in the record reached for any Glenn team.
- 2005Boys' basketball: sectional titles in two eras, the drought, and its end
Glenn's basketball record is a sectional record: the Falcons won a sectional title in the single-class era — Jason Groves, who played on a Glenn sectional champion and went on to coach Triton to a state title, remembers winning one with John Glenn and the regional against Warsaw as "special," in the Tribune 's 2026…
- 2005–2006The first attempt: the 2005 closure list
The reform era's second wave — the Daniels administration's business rebuild of the Bureau — is the one that first drew blood in this county, and it named this town by name: in 2005, under Commissioner Joel Silverman, the Bureau moved to close branches statewide in rounds.
2010s
- 2010–2011The siege case: Rozinski v. State , 2010–2011
Matthew D. Rozinski and his wife Renissa had been married nine years and lived in Walkerton with two young children when, on the night of January 18, 2010, an argument over her day's whereabouts became a beating: the Court of Appeals recites that he struck her repeatedly, lifted her by the neck, straddled her and…
- 2017–2022The county in numbers — the frame every township farm stands in
The Census of Agriculture's county profile for St. Joseph County counts 629 farms on 149,981 acres in 2017, an average farm of 238 acres, and 547 farms on 153,034 acres in 2022, an average of 280 acres — fewer farms farming more land, at a larger average size, across the five years.
- 2019The town as others saw it: Hoganson's Heartland
Walkerton's largest cultural fact may be a book: Kristin L. Hoganson's The Heartland: An American History (Penguin, 2019) takes this town as its emblematic heartland place…
2020s
- 2021–2026The second attempt: the consolidation of 2021 — carried out
The modern system's last transformation took the transaction out of the branch altogether, and in 2021 the state moved to finish the job on Roosevelt Road.
- 2022–2026The building's afterlife: the branch becomes the museum
Larry and Janet Hiler gave the building to the Walkerton Area Historical Society in 2022 — the gift is carried in this build's people and wars passes, banked from the town's own history page — and in 2023 the society moved its museum into it and renamed the institution for its new home: the Walkerton Heritage Museum.
- 2024–2025Enrollment: the official figures the record carries
The corporation is a small district holding its numbers: the National Center for Education Statistics' Common Core of Data — the federal file built from the states' own reports — gives the John Glenn School Corporation (Indiana corporation 7150…
- 2024–2025The drone era as its own period: winter 2024–25, tested for this ground
In the winter of 2024–25 the American sky filled with "drones," and the episode is tested here as its own period, the way the record insists on being read.
- 2025–2026Softball's breakthrough: first sectional 2025, first regional 2026
The newest famous seasons in this section belong to the softball program: on 30 May 2025 the John Glenn softball team won the first sectional title in program history, beating South Bend Saint Joseph 8–5 in the Plymouth Sectional.
- 2026The Standing Modern Unit Test, November 2026
The test, run as of November 2026: any standing Guard or Reserve unit, detachment, armory or recruiting station on Walkerton or Lincoln Township ground.
- 2026The present state, dated: November 2026
As of November 2026, no garment is designed or manufactured in Walkerton in the current directory and register record, and the town's clothing trade is a retail trade at corridor scale.
- 2026The 2026 elections: a president unseated in May, a ballot restored by a judge in September
Walkerton's town elections ran on the even-year cycle in 2026, and the cycle rewrote the council. Four Republicans filed for the town's seats by February 6, 2026: Gene Reese, Robert Payne, Timothy Lindewald, and Rick Coffman.
- 2026The buildings today, and the men and women who run them
The corporation teaches in four buildings, three of them Walkerton's own, and its website names every principal: Harold C. Urey Middle School, 407 Washington Street — the 1942 Walkerton High School building — is led in November 2026 by Principal Sean Steinkellner, with Quade Pike as Athletic Director and Dean of Students.
- 2026The state-titles test: none at the top step, in the record reached
The test for a state championship comes back empty, and the empty result prints: no IHSAA state title for John Glenn High School or for Walkerton High School appears in the record reached…
- 2026The drug era in the federal record
The era's local texture at official strength is one clause of the modern court record: when the Walkerton crash case of December 2025 was filed in April 2026 (the modern-record article below), the defendant's printed prior record ran through a 2020 pair of dealing-in-a-narcotic-drug convictions in this county's courts…
- 2026Across the line: the Walkerton-address congregations that stand in other counties
The Koontz Lake Missionary Church, at 8044 N State Road 23, is a congregation of the Missionary Church with a federal ruling of November 1969, its own site, and a pastor, Brian Baughman, named officiating at a Walkerton funeral as late as November 2026 — Greg Bentle held the pulpit in the town paper's 1990 church page.
- 2026The town's religion as it stands, November 2026
St. Patrick Parish (1856) at 807 Tyler Street, Pastor the Rev. Donald Davison, C.PP.S., at parish-bulletin strength through 1 February 2026, in the Diocese of Fort Wayne–South Bend under Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades.
- 2026The crossings: where the railroad meets the state-named streets
The inventory's activity field for these crossings reads zero trains a day — printed here as what it is, an inventory datum about the leased segment's reported activity as of 4 November 2026, not a claim that no wheel turns: a 23-mile lease segment worked from its Argos end will show exactly this face to a form.
- 2026The town's parks as they stand, November 2026
The Parks Department runs the whole of it on the town's behalf — registration through its own portal, programs from baseball to sledding, more than 850 children registered in 2026 — under a Park Board whose existence is attested in 1984 and whose current membership no source reached publishes.
- 2026Mental health: the facility test, stated whole, and the designated holders named
The system as it stands is dated as of November 2026 in this section's closing article.
- 2026The town's health system as it stands, November 2026
Walkerton's health system in November 2026 is one clinic, one dental address in conflict, one pharmacy, a fire-territory ambulance, and four hospitals in four other towns.
- 2026The Sagamore test: no resident holder proven — and the two near-misses expelled
The verdict: as of November 2026, no Sagamore of the Wabash held by a resident of Walkerton stands proven in any record this build reached.
- 2026The town's own honors: no roll found
American Legion Post 189 itself stands in the Wars leg's custody, active in the town's 2026 season.
- 2026The town's burying ground as it stands, November 2026
One ground, association-held, serves the town and township in November 2026, as it has since before its incorporation a century ago.
- 2026The present table: the Roosevelt Road corridor and the closed market
The grocery question ends the article as it ended Osceola's: the Walkerton Market, at 412 Illinois Street, is listed permanently closed — the town's supermarket-size grocery a closed listing in the record reached…
- 2026Coverage today, and broadcast at pointer
Today the town's news runs through other towns' papers, as Osceola's does: no Walkerton-published newspaper appears in the current directories reached, and the town's coverage in the record reached is the South Bend Tribune 's…
- 2026The 4-H era: the township's club at the modern fair
The fair the club shows at is the county's, on the South Bend grounds; its whole course, from the 4-H era's disputed 1926-or-1927 origin to the "101st annual" billing of July 3–11, 2026, is South Bend's telling.
- 2026Town government: the president's last weeks, a ward result still unlanded — FLAGGED
The president's exit — a transition, settled: Reese's service, running since January 1990, ends on December 31, 2026.
- 2026The county layer: a Democratic sweep, three chairs changing hands January 1 — FLAGGED
The frame: St. Joseph County cast 77,909 ballots on November 3, 2026, a turnout of 40.17 percent, and Democrats won every county race on the ballot (South Bend Tribune, November 9, 2026).
- 2026The schools today: the corporation stands; Lincoln Township's board seat turns over
The board seat — a transition: the corporation's Lincoln Township seat was contested on November 3, 2026, and the unofficial returns give it to Carissa Smith, 1,602 votes (59.6 percent), over Dennis Metz Jr., 1,084 (40.4 percent) .
- 2026Work and trade: the junction's economy
The development sweep: the development record this build banks stands in its own legs — Polygon's August 2026 capacity investment in the Businesses leg, and the Walkerton Elementary construction project through 2025 in the Schools section…
- 2026The heritage fast-movers: the Post, the museum, and the 250th year
The Post: American Legion Post 189 stands active in the Legion's own June 2026 record — set, in its words, to have "a major presence" in the town's July Fourth events, co-sponsoring the parade and the town's celebration of the nation's semiquincentennial in July 2026…
- 2026Walkerton Today: How Current This Record Is
The statement: this chapter was verified against the live record on November 11, 2026 , and it is true as of that date at the strengths printed.